How to Report on your TerraFund Project's Socioeconomic Progress

This article aims to help your team understand how to report on your project's socioeconomic impact -i.e. the jobs created, volunteers engaged, and people who received benefits, training, or support through livelihood-improving initiatives. 

Article Outline

TerraFund's Socioeconomic Indicators

Layers of Socioeconomic Impact within TerraFund

Differentiating jobs/employees, volunteers, and livelihoods benefitted

TerraFund's Socioeconomic Indicators

TerraFund tracks socioeconomic impact across a number of different areas (indicators), including the following: 

• Number of people employed on a full-time and part-time basis
• Number of volunteers engaged
• Livelihood initiatives implemented during the reporting period 
• Number of people directly supported or benefiting from restoration implementation   
• Number of people who received training or mentorship from the project 
• Number of people indirectly supported or benefiting from restoration implementation   
• Progress on Equity leadership program

In your reports, you will share your project’s socioeconomic progress, by providing both numbers of people engaged, and descriptions of the types of activities they engaged in. 

Layers of Socioeconomic Impact within TerraFund

The figure below illustrates the different levels of engagement of many project stakeholders:

The concentric circles represent the different ways that TerraFund investments can reach communities. 

• The innermost circle represents TerraFund champions who have received funds for restoration purposes as well as the people employed by the organization to achieve restoration goals, and people volunteering for the organization. This layer represents People Employed and Volunteers.
• The second layer includes individuals directly benefiting or supported from the project, such as local community members receiving tree seedlings or fruit trees, or a local business the project is supporting. Please provide details to explain all of the benefits your project provided, and explain the basis for the figures you provide.   
• The third layer includes individuals indirectly benefitting, namely members of the households or communities of individuals who benefited directly from the project, and other people who may experience benefits like improved soil quality, water availability, and air quality. If you provide a count of individuals indirectly receiving benefits from your project, please share how you calculated the number.

You will be asked to report on people within all of these layers. Please report accurately and do not inflate your numbers. You should be able to provide more information and any records to verify  your numbers, when asked.

Differentiating jobs/employees, volunteers, and livelihoods benefitted  

Jobs/employees

A “job” is defined as set of tasks and duties performed by one person aged 18 or over in exchange for financial compensation for at least one hour during a given week. Common jobs for restoration projects include trainers, nursery managers, seed collectors, tree planters, monitoring and maintenance staff, and administrative staff, along with other roles. 

Full-time jobs: Number of individuals working full-time jobs (35 or more hours) on the project per week with a consistent role that involves daily engagement for at least 3 months of the reporting period, disaggregated by gender and age group

Part-time jobs: Number of individuals working part-time jobs (less than 35 hours) on the project per week. In your employee registry, you will need to divide these jobs further on the period of engagement; part-time jobs and short-term/seasonal/casual jobs.

1. Part-time jobs: Number of individuals working part-time jobs (less than 35 hours) on the project per week with a consistent role that involves frequent engagement for at least 3 months of the last reporting period disaggregated by gender identity and age group.
2. Short-term/Seasonal/Casual jobs: Number of individuals working periodically on the project for less than 3 months, typically involved in tasks that take a few days, or during high engagement seasons such as planting seasons. These include jobs that involve recurring engagement at the same time in different months but for a short duration ranging from a few days to a few weeks, e.g. people engaged to plant for 3 days. People engaged in this type of jobs are paid per day for days worked.

Below is some additional guidance on reporting the number of people employed:

• Only include individuals directly employed by your organization. 
• Individuals paid solely by other organizations even if facilitated/funded by your organizations such as contractors, brokers, or subgrantees are not to be counted as part of jobs but counted as individuals directly receiving benefits 
• Please only include NEW employees of the reporting period (past 6 months). Do not count employees that you had reported in a previous project report.  Do not count volunteers or individuals receiving benefits in this field. Count a job when a person receives direct remuneration, including wages or financial compensation, from your organization. 
• Include people working temporarily for the project or only during seasons such as planting, hole digging or weeding as part-time jobs. 
• Consultants are included as part-time employees.
• Include people whose time is only partially funded through TerraFund. In other words, if someone is employed full-time by an organization but only part of their time is spent on the project funded through TerraFund, they are counted as a part-time employee within your project.  

Volunteers

A volunteer is an individual that freely dedicates their time to the project because they see value in doing so, but does not receive payment for their work. For example, they may volunteer their time because of a personal interest in environmental causes, or because they believe restoration efforts will benefit their community, or as part of their educational pursuits. Volunteers must work directly on the project. Paid workers, or people who receive benefits but do not dedicate their time to the project, are not considered volunteers.   

Livelihoods Benefitted

Livelihoods benefitted include local community members who get direct or indirect benefits/support, or training from the project.

A direct benefit is defined as an immediate and tangible value a project provides to target groups and local communities. 

Local community members directly supported or benefitting may include: 

• A person employed through a partner or subcontracted organization 
• A service provider that is not an employee of the organization, like a broker, contractor, supplier of goods and services
•  People offering services to the organization such as catering services, and transport services are not considered a job but rather a beneficiary.
• Anyone receiving support from implemented livelihood initiatives (full list in report)
• Among the local community members directly supported or benefitting, there are people who receive training from the project who are counted separately as a subset of those directly benefitting.
•  

An indirect benefit refers to the downstream value realized as a peripheral result of a project's restoration efforts, intentionally or unintentionally. People indirectly supported or benefitting include:

• Members of the households or communities of the individuals included in those directly supported or benefitting
• Households benefiting from downstream activities of restoration. 

Tips for Differentiating Employees, Volunteers, and People Receiving Benefits

• If multiple categories could apply to one person, we count them toward employees first, then volunteers, and then beneficiaries. Record an individual only once , in one category, to avoid duplications or over-estimations.
  • Example: if a person has been engaged both in paid work and other activities (trainings or receiving seedlings), this person will only be counted towards jobs and not counted in the beneficiaries’ numbers. 
  • Example: if a person volunteered for the project and also received some benefits in recognition of their support, such as food or seedlings, they are counted as a volunteer.
  • Example: if someone only received seedlings from the project, and did not do paid work or volunteer their time, they would be counted as part of the livelihoods benefitted directly.

We recognize that sometimes the line between an employee and a volunteer and a volunteer and a beneficiary may not always be clear. Please provide explanations in your report about the work that employees and volunteers are doing, and about the benefits that beneficiaries are receiving, and be sure to avoid counting the same individual in more than one category. If you have questions, contact your project manager.